A Simple Faith
by Enabeans
Summary: Kurt talks to Jamie about what it means to be a mutant. Friendship only. COMPLETE.


_I dislike using V and Z for Kurt's accent, so please just imagine it. The phrase: 'Ein Dämon, lass es nicht ent kommen' means…'A Demon, don't let it get away.'…just in case you were wondering._

**A Simple Faith**

Nervously Jamie hoisted the rucksack onto his shoulders, he balled his hands into fists to stop them shaking, and his eyes darted furtively from left to right; throwing one last cautious glance over his shoulder he started to walk purposefully away from Xavier's Institute for Gifted Youngsters.

"Jamie!"

At the sound of his name, Jamie froze like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car; his face flushed as he became convinced that he had been caught out, he whirled around prepared to deny everything, only to find himself face-to-face with a bemused Kitty Pryde holding out his lunchbox.

"You don't need to look so fierce, you know; I only brought you your lunchbox since you seemed in such a hurry this morning you forgot it."

"Thanks." Jamie answered, weakly.

A feeling of relief surged through him so strongly that he swayed; he wasn't cut out for deceptions, he always panicked too much.

"Are you okay?" Kitty asked in concern.

"Fine."

"Well, alright, if you're sure." She turned and began walking back up the driveway to where Scott stood waiting to give her a lift to school. "Have a good day at school!"

"I will." Jamie shouted back, positive that his guilt must be evident on his face; because Jamie Madrox wasn't going to school that day – he was bunking off.

As soon as he was out of sight of the mansion he began to run as fast as he could towards the forest on the outskirts of the East side of Bayville, he was convinced if he could just reach the forest he'd be safe for the day.

Spurred on by thoughts of being caught and made to attend school he ran further and faster than he usually would have been able to until, finally; bright red in the face and drench in sweat, he stopped. For a good few minutes all he could do was gasp for breath, bent almost double, with his hands on his trembling knees for support.

Once he had recovered his breath sufficiently he began walking, at a more leisurely pace, out of the bright sunlight and into the relative shade of the forest; the silence and gloom of the forest seemed almost oppressive to Jamie who suddenly began to wish he wasn't alone, to take his mind off it, and to pass the time, he decided to play a game of his own invention dubbed 'Clone Wars'.

The concept of the game was simple; he created 5 duplicates and sent them running off in different directions, the object of the game was then to find and catch all five within half an hour; finding them was never difficult as their thoughts were always on the peripheral edge of his mind, the hard part was catching them all within the time limit.

About 20 minutes, and 4 clones, later Jamie caught sight of something very strange through his last clone's eyes; there was a tiny hut in a clearing deep in the centre of the forest, all thoughts of the game forgotten Jamie concentrated all his efforts into tracking down this last duplicate, whom he had ordered mentally to stay hidden within sight of the clearing.

It took him another 15 minutes to fight his way through the dense undergrowth that seemed to form a living wall deliberately to keep out trespassers; as he got closer he began to move more stealthily until he caught sight of his last duplicate, silently absorbing him, Jamie continued alone.

Parting the branches of a bush carefully he peered through into the clearing, his mouth gaped open in shock as he saw the most surreal and unexpected sight imaginable; crouched on his haunches n the doorway of the hut was Kurt Wagner, methodically licking a deep gash on his arm, the way a dog or cat might lick a wound.

Stifling a gasp of surprise Jamie started to back away, the fear of being caught skipping school overrode his natural caution and he stepped on a twig causing it to snap with a noise like a gunshot; he froze, praying Kurt hadn't heard anything, but it was no use.

At the sound of the twig breaking Kurt's head snapped up; covering the distance across the clearing in one graceful leap he thrust his arm into the bush, grabbed and pulled.

Jamie gave a yell of fear and indignation as three strong blue fingers grasped hold of his collar and lifted him up, face-to-face with a set of a bared fangs.

"Jamie?" The shock of seeing a member of the Institute caused Kurt's grip to loosen; Jamie fell onto the floor with an 'umpf', accidentally creating two duplicates.

"Hi Kurt." The three Jamie's chorused sheepishly, before merging into a single shame-faced boy.

"Jamie?" Kurt repeated weakly, sitting down on the forest floor, hard.

"Are you okay?" Jamie asked, motioning to the deep gash on the older teen's forearm; blood still oozed out causing the fur around it to mat together in sticky clumps.

"_Ja_, I'm fine."

"What happened?"

"Wait a minute," Kurt said, holding his hand up. "What are you doing here? Why aren't you in school?"

"Are you sure you're ok?" Jamie asked again, desperately trying to change the subject. "You look like you might need stitches."

"Jamie, stop, I'm fine."

Jamie looked up and saw Kurt gazing at him with compassion in his eyes.

"Did something happen to you at school, today?"

"I didn't go to school." Jamie mumbled.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really." Jamie pulled his knees up close to his chest and sighed; he looked up at Kurt curiously.

"So why aren't you in school?"

"I have a free period, _mein freund_, and I wanted to be alone."

Jamie knew there had to be more to it than that but he didn't push it; resting his head on his knees his gaze fell across the little hut, he had almost forgotten it was there.

"Is this yours?"

"_Ja."_

Jamie looked at Kurt hoping for more of an explanation but there didn't seem to be one forthcoming; curiosity overcame his sadness and he stood up to examine the hut further.

Up close it was a very ram-shackle affair, a hotchpotch of broken branches and badly nailed together wood; the crude doorway stood empty and the only distinguishing feature about the whole place was a carved plaque above the door, Jamie traced the letters softly with his fingers.

"What does this say?"

"Sogar kann das bescheidenste der Wohnungen Haus des Gottes sein."

"What does it mean?"

Kurt sat silently for a moment as though unwilling to reveal the secrets of his private sanctuary; slowly he rose to his feet and walked to stand beside Jamie, his tail swinging gently.

"It means, _'Even the humblest of dwellings can be God's house_.'"

"You built a church? I didn't even know you were a Christian."

"You never asked."

"So why don't you just go to a regular church like everyone else?"

"Oh, _ja_, that vould look great; a demon in the house of God." Kurt said this with a flippant smile on his face, but he couldn't disguise the note of bitterness in his tone or the hurt that flashed in his golden eyes.

"You're not a demon, Kurt. Besides, you've got your inducer, you know."

"I vould never wear it to church."

"Why not?"

"Because it's not my true face, it's not how God created me. If I go as anything other than how He created me, then it feels like I'm insulting him; like I'm telling Him that He got it wrong."

Jamie nodded slowly in understanding; he moved back to sit on a nearby log, Kurt followed and the two sat in silence for quite some time, the only sound was Kurt lapping at his wound.

"I wish I was normal!" Jamie burst out suddenly, his voice sounding unnaturally loud.

Kurt looked up, but seeing that Jamie was finally ready to talk about what was bothering him he refrained from saying anything; he just sat there waiting for the younger boy to continue.

"I wish I wasn't a mutant, I wish mutants didn't even exist! If we were all just ordinary people then nobody would hate us, nobody would debate whether to allow us to do normal stuff, nobody could stop you going to church if you wanted to and…" Jamie's voice, which had been filled with passionate rage, now dropped and filled with sadness. "…and nobody would pick on me anymore."

Kurt's fur rippled in distress, he hated to see anyone so upset; his tail lashed wildly as he considered what to say. He wasn't going to insult Jamie by pretending that school-yard bullying wasn't painful, and he wasn't going to lie and say that if he stuck with it then eventually it'd get better because there would always be somebody ready to persecute them for being mutants. He remembered going through these thoughts himself when he was younger, remembered the pain and the feeling of peace when he finally realised that being a mutant was part of who he was.

He tried to think of some way to help Jamie achieve this piece without re-living his own painful experiences but, with an internal sigh, he realised it was probably the best way to illustrate his points; steeling himself against his own emotions he began to talk in a low, steady voice.

"I used to wish to be normal as well; I used to want it so badly it would almost hurt, I remember hoping that one day I would wake up and have ordinary skin instead of fur. I would hate it when my parents would say things like 'God created you special' and 'It's what's on the inside that counts', I'd wonder what kind of sick sense of humour God had that he could create something like me." Kurt stopped and took a couple of deep shuddering breaths to try and ease the tightness in his throat.

"One day, when I vas about eight or nine, I decided to disobey my parents and go to the playground in broad daylight; I'd always been taken after dark vhen no-one vas there to see me, but I wanted to feel the sunshine and play with the other children. They started screaming when they saw me _'Ein Dämon, lass es nicht ent kommen_.'"

"What does _lass es_…whatever, mean?" Jamie interrupted quietly, but Kurt didn't seem to hear him.

"They formed a gang and carried me away to a nearby tree; they tied me to it using one girl's skipping rope, then they vent off in search of matches so they could burn the demon and send it back to Hell. I kept screaming at them that I wasn't a demon, but nobody listened; when they set fire to the tree I closed my eyes just willing myself to disappear."

Jamie looked at Kurt out of horrified eyes, he suddenly felt incredibly selfish for worrying about a bit of name-calling.

"Luckily, that vas the day I came into my teleportation powers; I thought it was divine intervention and my faith in God vas born. But still I wished to be human. On my twelfth birthday I got a letter from Professor Xavier inviting me to study here; I was devastated, an invitation here meant I truly was a freak. Here, feel this…"

Kurt stopped abruptly and held out one three-fingered hand, he took hold of Jamie's fingers and guided them over one long dextrous digit; Jamie gasped feeling a definite line of raised skin under the thick blue fur.

"What's that?"

"The night I got the invitation I decided to have one last attempt to be normal, I used twenty razors to fully shave all my fur and then I used a kitchen knife to try and separate my three fingers into five; I finally passed out from blood-loss when I vas trying to cut off my tail."

"No!" Jamie almost shouted, unwilling to believe Kurt was capable of hurting himself in such a way. "I thought you loved your tail."

"I do now."

"What changed?" Jamie asked, trembling with emotion. "Why did you decide to come to the Institute?"

"It was about nine months after I had received the initial invitation; I was coming home one night from a walk along the cliff-top near my home when I heard a scream. Without thinking about it I just teleported in the direction of the noise; I found myself halfway down the cliff clutching a small boy who had fallen, my tail instinctively wrapped itself around a branch sticking out of the cliff-face, saving both our lives."

Kurt smiled for the first time since he had begun talking; his fangs gleamed brightly against his dark fur.

"It was at that moment I realised being a mutant vas the best thing in the world; sure we might get picked on and called names but we have the greatest gift ever, we can help people. That night I got on a plane for Bayville and since I arrived here I've realised more and more each day how lucky I am."

Jamie looked up, his brow furrowed in confusion.

"What do you mean?"

"For starters I have true friends; not many people can say that, they might have friends but they can't be sure that they'll always be there for them. We can say that we will stick together no matter what, even risk our lives for each other, and that is something really special."

"I guess so." Jamie said, his mind trying to grasp this new way of thinking.

"Besides, I think the people who pick on me now are just jealous."

"Why would they be jealous?"

"Well, firstly, they can't do this."

Kurt's grin widened before he disappeared with a loud _'bamf' _and a cloud of pungent smelling smoke; he re-appeared barely a second later hanging upside down from a nearby tree.

"I'm not saying it's always going to be easy," Kurt continued from his new position. "But as long as you can always remember how blessed you are to be you, and have the gifts you do, and the friends you do, then it will get easier."

"Thanks Kurt." Jamie said, smiling up at the older boy. He felt as though a weight had been lifted from his mind and he knew that, although there would still be times he felt like crying, he would never be as scared of the bullies again.

"Anytime."


End file.
